I have an
image of my grandfather fixed in my mind.
If I also live to be 88, I expect it is how I will remember him. He is headed out to a day’s work, dressed in
a tattered red hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans streaked with brown, clothes
that even after careful washing smell partly sweet like silage and partly
pungent like something else. He walks
with a determined stride and a broad grin, and he’s whistling, “Buffalo gals,
won’t you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon.”
Why wouldn’t
he be whistling and smiling? He was
going to work. And Grandpap loved to work,
found it deeply satisfying. He pursued
his work with the intensity that some men reserve for pleasures that are far
less healthy and useful.
He was able
to work each day in a place that he had always known and loved. My grandfather was born in the house where he
would eventually die, even in the same room.
He learned about crops and cattle from his father, and spent decades
tilling the fields he had wandered as a boy.
He loved these pastures and crop fields, because they contained the
story of his life.
